Engineering biological systems for therapeutic drug delivery

This thesis involves the development of recombinant proteins to form a self-assembling system. Throughout, protocols were established to express, purify, and characterise the delivery system and the attached functional proteins. These proteins were engineered with a non-canonical amino acid to enable azide-based bio-orthogonal reactions. This resulted in the attachment of non-protein-based cargo to efficiently track the proteins localisation in vitro and in vivo. Targeting antibody fragments were also genetically incorporated as proof of concept to be translated to various targeting and therapeutic proteins. The delivery system was also investigated in murine models to determine their intrinsic behaviour in vivo. This investigation improved the understanding of the behaviour and possible applications of the delivery system.